Starbucks Stock Market: Can The Coffee Maker Ever Hit $100?

What is happening with Starbucks stock market? Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX) goes back and forth with Wall Street investors, always trying to woo them and bring them on board no matter what the underlying trading or investing picture for the stock. Such wooing is par for the course and one can hardly blame SBUX for adopting such a posture. But on the other side of that posture are the analysts; an ever-parading wall of opinion on where SBUX will be at some point in the future. Their opinion is never cohesive, and for every analyst that considers Starbucks stock market upside a problem, there is an analyst who believes the stock can and will see better days. From our perspective the big question is whether or not SBUX can ever be a $100 stock.

Getting to $100 for SBUX will take something special when one considers that the all-time high as of this writing is only $64. When Starbucks stock market hit that milestone back in June 2017 many analysts were cautiously predicting further growth with caveats. Those caveats hinged heavily on the current market penetration of SBUX and an overwhelming sense that things may be ready to change at the company that made its IPO debut way back in 1992. The first big change to hit the quest to $100 was the biggest of all – a CEO change.

Starbucks Stock Market – Leadership

When investors assess Starbucks stock market they do so by taking a look at leadership. For a long time SBUX has been headed by Howard Schultz; that all changed in April 2017 when a new CEO was appointed. For many on Wall Street the leadership change was nothing short of heresy; Schultz for many was the reason SBUX had grown from a small coffee shop in Seattle to the globally recognized brand it is today. But nothing last forever, especially at a Starbucks stock market that has seen a stock decline while simultaneously hitting a ceiling. For many investors SBUX should have continued on from the $64 high; it seems then that bringing in new CEO Kevin Wilson was a mission towards breaking that barrier.

Starbucks Stock Market – China Market, The Big Hope

China has an estimated 1.4B people living in within its borders making it perhaps the biggest market by pure potential in the history of the world. China also has one of the fastest growing middle class in the world, another factor that makes it a target for all the big American companies looking to grow global profits. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) already counts the Chinese market as a big part of overall revenues and SBUX is also making a play for dominance in the country. SBUX management, as early as 2015 signaled that it would be looking to expand store count in China and the Asia-Pacific region to over 10,000. China is projected to deliver revenue of $3B over the next five years with India expected to chip in another $1B. That’s serious growth potential; and while maturity of those numbers will take time, investors are starting to take a serious look at the upside for the company. They’ve done that largely because the US market is considered a bit long in the tooth.

Starbucks Stock Market – US Market, the Aging Contributor

Without the laptop-carrying middle class population in America, SBUX would not be the company it is today. But America’s middle class, unlike China’s, isn’t growing. America’s middle class in stark contrast has been shrinking and this is affecting Starbucks stock market profile. Sales are anemic in the US and there is a great hope that the new CEO can figure out a way to lift those numbers. The next 12 to 24 months will be very interesting for Starbuck stock market and penny stocks, too.